With improvements of signal processing techniques and network transmission techniques, various multimedia services have been made possible and demands for interactive multimedia contents and realized media contents have increased more and more. A multi-view video coding method which is one of various techniques used to create multimedia contents and realized media contents is a technique of allowing viewers to feel a stereoscopic effect at the time of watching a video created from multiple viewpoints.
A multi-view video can be used in various fields such as an FVV (free viewpoint video), an FTV (free viewpoint TV), a 3DTV, surveillance, and home entertainment. In recent years, the JVT (Joint Video Team) and the VCEG (Video Coding Expert Group) of the MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group) have standardized MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) which is standard technology of the multi-view video coding techniques.
Unlike a single-view video, a multi-view video has a high correlation between neighboring image frames which are images of various viewpoints present in the same POC (Picture Order Count). In an existing video encoding method, repeated information can be reduced or removed using spatial/temporal/statistical correlations of a single-view video. In a multi-view video encoding method, an inter-view correlation can be additionally used in the existing method so as to reduce repeated information of a video. Since a multi-view video is obtained by simultaneously shooting the same scene using multiple cameras adjacent to each other, the multi-view video contains almost the same information except for parallax and slight illumination difference and thus has a very high inter-view correlation.